Tom Sweeney, operations manager for Real Goods Solar, sits with a stack of files containing permit paperwork required by Bay Area cities for the installation of solar panels on Thursday, March 3, 2011 in Campbell, Calif. Each permit applications costs Real Goods Solar an average of 6 man hours.

Tom Sweeney loves solar power. The paperwork, however, is a different story.

Before his company, Real Goods Solar, can install panels on a home or business, it must first obtain a permit from the local government. But every city has its own requirements, fees and timetables. For solar companies, the lack of a standardized process means time wasted and money lost.

"We're in the solar business - we're not in the permit business," said Sweeney, operations manager at Real Goods Solar.

He points to a sheaf of papers on a table at the company's Campbell office. An application for a residential solar system in San Jose. Ten pages, including a diagram showing where the panel mounts will sit on the home's roof. The packet takes perhaps four hours to prepare - nothing too onerous.

"They're the good guys in all this," Sweeney said.

He then shows off an application for a similar project in another Bay Area city. The stack of papers stands an inch high, packed with diagrams and technical data on the system's many components. Preparation time: two to three days.

Sweeney would rather not reveal the city's name, for fear of antagonizing the local bureaucrats who already take more than a month to process the applications.

Installers nationwide have to deal with the same problem. So do their customers. The need to devote staff time to satisfying different permit requirements costs the installers money, a cost they pass on to homeowners or businesses buying solar systems.

Time is money

A recent study by SunRun Inc., a national solar leasing company based in San Francisco, estimated that cost at just over $2,500 for each residential system, on average.

Although prices vary widely, a typical 3-kilowatt home solar system can cost about $18,000.

The permitting problem has drawn the attention of government officials, both in the Bay Area and Washington.

The U.S. Department of Energy started an effort last month to slash solar costs by 75 percent. While much of the effort, dubbed SunShot, will focus on new technology, the department also wants to standardize permit requirements, seeing the move as a relatively easy way to cut costs.

Meanwhile, a coalition of East Bay cities and academic institutions is pursuing the same idea. The East Bay Green Corridor has developed a draft plan for standardization and may present final recommendations to its member cities this spring. The cities are Alameda, Albany, Berkeley, El Cerrito, Emeryville, Oakland and San Leandro.

"We want to make it as streamlined and user-friendly as possible," said Carla Din, the coalition's director. "The time requirement will be reduced, the cost will be reduced, the frustration level will go down."

Online application

One idea being explored both by the coalition and the federal government involves creating an online application process that multiple jurisdictions could use.

Some solar advocates want to take the standardization idea one step further. Cities, they say, should not only adopt the same permitting requirements, they should also use the same procedures for inspecting newly installed solar systems. And utility companies should standardize the way they connect those systems to the grid.

"If you're not looking at all three of those issues together, you're not really solving the problems in a systematic way," said Doug Payne, executive director of SolarTech, a solar industry consortium based in San Jose.

Later this month, SolarTech plans to issue a statewide challenge, asking cities and companies to collaborate on ways to make permitting, inspecting and interconnecting as efficient as possible.

Din and others insist that standardization won't compromise safety. The permitting process ensures that solar companies don't install poorly designed systems that could overwhelm a home's electrical wiring and pose a fire hazard. That wouldn't change, advocates of standardization say.

"It seems wasteful not to solve this problem, when it's completely within our capabilities," Sprague said. "And I haven't heard a good reason why not, other than, 'That's the way we've always done it.' "